Star Wars Urban Photography
French photographer Cedric Delsaux has created a series of photographs where he places Star Wars characters and vehicles in modern urban locations.
Death Star Reborn
It’s a simple shape: a sphere with a concave dish set in the surface. In 1977, the shape was forever burned into our brain from the blockbuster movie Star Wars. The Death Star was a space station as large as a moon that housed the “ultimate weapon,” a planet-destroying laser.
Mental Floss has channeled our inner geek and produced a list of 6 things that resemble the Death Star. At left is Mimas, one of the inner moons of Saturn. It has an 80-mile-wide crater named Herschel, which certainly looks like the Death Star’s super laser. The uncanny resemblance is coincidental, however, as Star Wars was made several years before Mimas was photographed up close.
Bad Movie Physics
Most space movies focus on action and adventure, and treat the laws of physics like mere suggestions. In Hollywood’s version of space, you routinely hear the roar of rockets, witness fiery explosions, and have aliens conversing in English and impregnating humans.
This is understandable, of course. Who wants to watch Han Solo spend years on the journey to Alderaan, only to find that the planet has three times Earth’s gravity, and Solo can barely stand up and walk, much less swagger?
The website io9 has rated 18 movies based on how many laws of physics they mangled. The site purposely omitted Star Trek because it routinely violates pretty much every law of physics.
